Fairytale
by Nikola11
Summary: "My story was bullets so I used them. My story was dragons so I became them. My story was highway robbery and shots to the head, bleeding out in hallways while holding his hand, begging, 'Please, he's hurting me, please, please…'" WARNINGS: overall allusions to domestic violence (physical and sexual); pervasive gun metaphors/themes, plus related concepts.


**A/N: **A reiteration of the WARNINGS: There are allusions to domestic violence (of all varieties: physical, sexual, emotional) throughout the story, as well as pervasive gun metaphors/analogies/themes, etc., and accompanying references to blood, death, etc.

PLEASE NOTE: 1) Neither Blaine nor Kurt dies. Promise. 2) Neither Blaine nor Kurt are the ones doing the violence. I swear. 3) This isn't supernatural at all; no magic, fairies, etc. 4) If the text is centered and in brackets, that means it is taken from the poem Wishbone by Richard Siken. As in, those are not my words. But all the between stuff is.

Okay, thanks for checking out my story!

-PBialek

* * *

><p>[<em>You saved my life <em>he says. _I owe you,_ _I owe you everything._]

* * *

><p>It started six months ago.<p>

And you knew, didn't you? You saw?

The way my clothes got looser and my hair got longer because I stopped caring, let it grow wild and curly into a devil's halo.

The way I walked bent forward and limping, so changed from peacock-proud and buoyant.

He was never like this before. We started all sweet smiles and gentle caresses, _Let me get that for you _and _You deserve a night off, we should go out. _And I let him touch me and he let me believe it mattered, that _I _mattered. He gave me his home, made space for my things and bought extra hangers for the closet to turn _his _and _mine _into _ours_. For two years I let myself believe that I'd found my future, that I was living it, that I'd scoured my name into the skin of my new life, ready to pour the ink into the wounds and make it permanent. Make it stick.

It lasted six months.

And you saw me on campus every day. I felt you watching me, but you never spoke to me and you never _looked_ at me, but you watched me, and every time the words pressed against the back of my throat, _He's hurting me, please help me, please,_ you'd already walked away.

But you watched me. You knew, didn't you?

How sometimes I almost couldn't bear to sit in the hard plastic chairs, and how, sometimes, I had to wear makeup on my neck or cheeks because he liked to bruise me. Some days I had to sit forward in the chair because my back bore splotchy constellations of ink-dark stars.

He liked to whisper, sugar-sweet, in my ear, tell me I was his everything, his only good thing, and that he would never let me go.

He liked to feed me adoration and attention, then punch me in the stomach until I puked it all up.

And you knew.

Didn't you?

* * *

><p>[You don't, I say, you don't owe me squat, let's just get going, let's just<p>

get gone, but he's relentless,

keeps saying _I owe you, _says _Your shoes are filling with your own damn blood, you must want something, just tell me, and it's yours._]

* * *

><p>You look like someone who's never had to wonder whether or not they are loved.<p>

I look like someone who's never been loved in a way that made sense.

He screws up and I save his neck and suddenly I'm the hero. I'm the one who rides on shoulders, picking flowers out of the sky and weaving them into hopeful crowns.

But then I screw up and he abandons me and I'm the one lying in the dirt, waiting for the crowds to stop stamping on my fingers and knocking me down just as soon as I get a leg up under me.

He'd buy me things when he liked me, come home with a little stuffed toy, cute and smiling, all for me, and I'd put it with the others, say to myself, _See, it's better now. It's going to get better._

And when he didn't like me, he'd bleed it from me, draw it all out of me until I couldn't stand up anymore and then he'd keep going while I stained the hardwood floors.

* * *

><p>[But I can't look at him, can hardly speak.<p>

I took the bullet for all the wrong reasons, I'd just as soon kill you myself, I say.

You keep saying _I owe you, I owe…_ but you say the same thing

every time. Let's not talk about it, let's just not talk.]

* * *

><p>Three months ago, you got to class early and sat beside me.<p>

You didn't say anything, but you watched me.

And then, at the end of class, you knew that I'd wait until everyone else had gone and you waited with me, slowly packed your bag until the room stood empty and, before you left, you _looked _at me.

And I hated you for it.

I felt like I had a gun in my pocket and you were daring me to pull the trigger without telling me the target, _Who is it, then? Is it me or him?_ You were giving me a bullet that I couldn't use. It wasn't the right one. It didn't fit the gun.

I left you sitting there with your bullets, left you sitting there while I went home and- _No, I swear, it wasn't like that_- he shot me with the gun I couldn't fathom how to use. He shot me- _I don't know what you think you saw, I don't know him, he doesn't know me_- and I felt the bullets go in but they never came out.

* * *

><p>[Not because I don't believe it, not because I want it any different, but I'm always saving<p>

and you're always owing and I'm tired of asking to settle the debt.

Don't bother.

You never mean it anyway, not really, and it only makes me that much more ashamed.]

* * *

><p>I've lost count of them.<p>

The bullets.

Each one, right after the other, fired and followed by his tearful _I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but you can't keep doing things like this, you know it makes me mad_. I'm full of sorrowful lead, heavy and aching with it, I feel them in my veins, knocking together and filling up my lungs until I'm breathing their dust and his words, his _It's your fault, just stop, that's all you have to do, just stop making me mad and I'll stop hurting you. _

And it's always the same. It never stops. He keeps hurting and I keep breathing and I still haven't figured out how to work the gun.

When you saw me the next day you sat on the other side of the room. You kept your back to me, fiddled with your scarf and your brooch, and you didn't watch me.

You knew, didn't you?

How he saw you sitting next to me. How the bleeding still hadn't stopped, and I had to sit with one leg underneath me on the chair to keep from staining the plastic.

* * *

><p>[There's only one thing I want, don't make me say it, just get me bandages, I'm bleeding,<p>

I'm not just making conversation.]

* * *

><p><em>He's hurting me, please help me, please.<em>

I'm holding an empty gun the wrong way around, and the barrel's warm like it's just been fired.

* * *

><p>[There's smashed glass glittering everywhere like stars. It's a Western, Henry,<p>

it's a downright shoot-em-up. We've made a graveyard out of the bone white afternoon.

It's another wrong-man-dies scenario

and we keep doing it, Henry, keep saying _until we get it right…_

but we always win and we never quit, see, we've won again, here we are at the place

where I get to beg for it

where I get to say _Please, for just one night, will you lay down next to me, we can leave our_

_clothes on, we can stay all buttoned up..._]

* * *

><p>You made me dream about it.<p>

About princes and fairy tales. About falling in love like fire and oil, passionate and painful and fever-bright, until it slows down, simmers, but never goes out.

You made me dream that the script was different, that for once instead of _Don't make me chain you to the bed, don't make me get the scissors and dig the bullets out one by one so that I can wipe them off and shoot you with them like they're something new, _it would be _Don't make me the good guy, I'm not, but you are, you have to be, you're so much better than me._

And it hurt.

I dreamed and I dreamed and I always woke up and it _hurt_.

* * *

><p>[...but we both know how it goes. I say <em>I want you inside me<em>

and you hold my head underwater, I say _I want you inside me_

and you split me open with a knife. I'm battling monsters, I'm pulling you out of the burning buildings and you say _I'll give you anything._ But you never come through.]

* * *

><p>I wanted love like movies.<p>

Where the mother coddles her baby and promises moons and stars and whispers against new skin and swears on her life, on her soul, that nothing in the world will ever hurt, will ever harm.

I wanted love like books.

Where the protagonist is whole and happy and sure in himself and he may not be popular, but he has friends, and he doesn't need, doesn't seek out, doesn't want for anything because he has _everything_ that matters.

I found love like dragons.

Like stones and arrows, _Death, take me now_, like drowning and breathing at the same time, hauling things around that aren't mine to carry, _Please, I don't want them anymore, they're yours, you killed them, they're yours to bury, not mine. _

Love like government, handed out like food stamps, only so much at a time, _Don't spoil him, dearest, he'll get stronger, just leave him be, _let me drag my boots through the mud and blood, watched me fall down, give in, stand up, and over again.

Love like nails through my palms.

Love like a kiss on the cheek in a garden.

* * *

><p>[Even when you're standing up<p>

you look like you're lying down, but will you let me kiss your neck, baby? Do I have to tie your arms down? Do I have to stick my tongue in your

mouth like the hand of a thief,

like a burglary, like it's just another petty theft?]

* * *

><p>I am his but he is not mine.<p>

I am his to wreck and to ruin, to shape and mold from clay and to fire and dash against the kitchen tiles, _You stupid whore, can't you do anything right? _

It happened so slowly, so gradually, until he was standing there with all the bits of me I cherished, lit like kindling under the fire of him, and I was standing with all the parts of me I hated. He let me keep those, let me nurture them on my own until they filled all the empty spaces, and he kept those nice bits for special occasions, to wave them out at me, to say _Remember this? This was you and now it's mine, and I will change it so completely, destroy it so utterly, that it will never fit back the way it used to._

And you could see them, I know you could, all those black little bits that I was made of growing bigger and blacker, ready to spill out, consume, obliterate…

You were scared. I could tell.

You got me hurt, and you knew it, but I would let myself get hurt again and again, I just needed the gun back, _please, you're the only one who knows how to use it, teach me how, and I promise I'll do it properly this time._

* * *

><p>[It makes me tired, Henry. Do you see what I mean? Do you see what I'm getting at?]<p>

* * *

><p>It lasted six months.<p>

I'm so tired.

I'm dragging around the corpse of myself, lifting it into my chair and pretending I still have a life of my own. It's heavy and unwieldy, grotesquely distorted like a photograph after a hurricane, warped and ugly, but too delicate to touch, see, the corner's just torn, _Stop trying, you'll only ruin it more._

This is my fairytale come-to-life, only I'm not the prince, or the king, or the knight on his white steed. I'm not even the princess. I don't get the happy ending. I get the sleeping on rocks and dodging fire and starving to death in the tower because no one believed I was still there, still worth it, still _alive_.

Except you.

But you don't know where my tower is, and you don't know how to rescue me, either, and neither do I, really. I don't have the hair to let down to you, or the magic potion for you to drink. There is no map, no lantern in the sky, no star to guide you there, or to give any indication that you won't be too late when you arrive. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. See, I don't even know anymore, because I look into the mirror and I see one whole person just a bit stretched at the seams, but then I look into his eyes and I see my own grinning corpse-face laughing back at me as if to say, _Isn't that cute? Isn't it adorable? I used to be that, and now I am this, but he still believes it hasn't happened yet, that he hasn't died completely yet, that he still has hope for love left._

The story's been written, I have the book, it's here, all filled in, but I can't look at the ending.

I don't want to know what I'll look like.

* * *

><p>[I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you've taken something out of me, and I have to search my body for the scars, thinking <em>Did he find that one last tender place to <em>

_sink his teeth in?_]

* * *

><p>What do you do?<p>

Your life has been taken from you, mashed up and spit out and run over so many times, and each time it gets put back together one of the pieces turns up missing, and the tape gets a little thinner, and the glue stops sticking as well.

What do you do?

There's a boy who could help you, who _wants _to help you, but he could just as easily hurt you and he _knows _it, and you realize that your only chance at getting out of this is to do it yourself, but you're not quite sure how to wake up anymore, it just keeps happening, and you can't shake the feeling that one day soon it just won't.

What do you do, when you're not sure if you'd mind?

When you're so tired, so riddled through with it all, that you can longer think of a reason to?

I look at my life and I wonder if I could have made it any different, if I could have changed some of the words, given myself scales instead of thoughts and made myself twelve stories high and invincible.

I look at my life and I wonder if this is all I'm worth.

* * *

><p>[I know you want me to say it, Henry, it's in the script, you want me to say <em>Lie down on the bed, you're all I ever wanted and worth dying for too…<em>]

* * *

><p>I know how the story goes.<p>

This is the part where something changes. Something breaks or something mends, and the hero becomes the villain or the villain becomes the dragon or the dragon kills the hero, but in any case, it _changes_. It bends and turns until the perspective is different, until the lesson is learned and life goes on for better or worse.

The point is that it _changes._

Every day you make sure to smile at me. You'll turn around in your seat and grin a little, or you'll nod at me as if to say _I can still see you, I promise. See? I'm looking right at you_. Every day. Even when the semester ended and the courses changed and I thought I'd never see you again, you showed up in three of my classes and I couldn't decide if I should be terrified or elated or horrified at how badly I had come to rely on just _seeing _you.

Or how much you had already _changed_.

I'm tired.

I am aching and see-through and hollowed out, and it's time to rewrite the story.

* * *

><p>[...but I think I'd rather keep the bullet.<p>

It's mine, see, I'm not giving it way you still owe me, and that's as good as anything.]

* * *

><p>The gun is empty again, warm and angry, but this time it's pointing away from me.<p>

He's looking at his chest like he's confused, like he couldn't see this coming, like he's never seen his own blood before, or a bullet lodged in bone.

It's not the bullet that you gave me, and it's not one of his, either.

I made it myself.

I made it out of six months, a compression of time into a lead sphere struck right through his ribs where his heart should be, but it's just blood. Either way, it's killing him. And he's so angry about it, like it's my fault that he's dying, like it's my fault that it's _his _bullets inside me, and _his _hands on my throat, and _his, his, his_….

I'm sitting in the library with the computer on and the phone to my ear, and the lady on the other end is speaking slowly and calmly, and I'm grateful for it. _He'll just be getting home, _I tell her, _There's a key under the mat and an album under the bed. He liked to take pictures and make me look at them. _She asks if there's anything else, and I say, _There's a switch in the closet and scars on my back, but I can't go back, I can't I can't, I want to show you, but I can't..._

I'm sitting in an office, white and beige and blue, until they come in and take more pictures, _Can we see your back, just for a moment? _and _He bit you? On the shoulder? We'll take some impressions, just hold on, just a bit longer…_

They didn't close the blinds. I could see out into the lobby when he came in, struggling and angry until he saw me, then frothing at the mouth while I paled and trembled and _Please don't let him near me, please, I don't have more bullets, that was all I had and I can't make more, if I try again it will kill me_.

They gave me a pill and told me to sleep.

I dreamed and I dreamed and I woke up and it still hurt.

But they'd closed the blinds this time, and they changed the room, and I was changing my story into something that, maybe, someday, wouldn't hurt.

* * *

><p>[You can't get out of this one, Henry, you can't get it<p>

out of me, and with this bullet lodged in my chest,

covered with your name, I will turn myself into a gun, because I'm hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own.]

* * *

><p>Three weeks later and I'm back at school, in a room of my own with a window and a bed and little bottles lined up neatly on the bathroom counter, notes on the calendar to remind me about the sessions, <em>I think they'll really help you, to talk things through<em>.

I'm a little late to class, and I'm leaning against the door, watching you doodle in your notebook for a moment before turning your head towards the far back corner where I used to sit, as if you're waiting for me to fill in the space. But I don't and you turn back around, start doodling again until you stop and turn around, and back again.

I smile, and it doesn't even hurt anymore.

Deep breath, walk inside.

_Your life is your own, Blaine, and you have the words to change it, I promise._

"Is this seat taken?"

* * *

><p>[I'll be your<p>

slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue

and final resting, walking around with this bullet inside me like the bullet was already there,

like it's been waiting inside me the whole time.]

* * *

><p>There's a jar on the kitchen counter full of the bullets I spent three years digging out of my own skin, pulling them from between my bones and from behind my eyes, dropping them one by one into the glass and screwing the lid shut tight. There's just one left, stuck in a place I can't quite reach on my own. It's smaller than the others, but somehow heavier, and I know it's going to be there for a long time yet, so no point getting upset about it now.<p>

My storybook sits open on the coffee table, the penultimate page half-filled with shaky writing gone steadier over the years, the product of an unceasing pattern of hope, despair, love, hatred, and over again. There are new words getting mixed in with the others, new colors in the drawings and new names filling in the blanks.

I still haven't looked at the last page.

What if it's the same?

What if my story has changed, but the ending hasn't? What if I'll need that last bullet someday, find a new gun and kill the same dragon?

What then?

So I don't look at the last page.

Instead I do up my tie, pace the front hall and wait for the buzz that means you've arrived, that you're waiting downstairs to take my arm and hold my hand finally, finally, because you've been so patient for three years, content as friends, while I tried to remember how to be one whole person.

But I remember now, so when that buzzer sounds and you take my arm and, at the end of the night, when you ask, _Do we get to kiss now?_, I'll say, _Whenever we want._

And when, a few years later, as you're sitting at your table under the bay window working ardently, your glasses slipping further and further down your nose, I kneel beside your chair and ask, _Will you be my fairytale, Kurt?_, you'll say, _I always was._

* * *

><p>[Do you want it? Do you want anything I have?<p>

Will you throw me to the ground like you mean it, reach inside and wrestle it out with your bare hands? If you love me, Henry, you don't love me

in a way I understand.]

* * *

><p>It'll get put away someday, my storybook.<p>

I'll forget about it eventually. I won't remember what's in the box I've carried around

with me from dorm to apartment to house to second house.

But, one day, when we leave the house for the last time, when they're clearing out the rooms and making piles of the things we'll take with us to the care home because _We just worry about you guys, living here alone, and we can't take care of you the way you're going to need,_ one of our great-grandchildren will find it and pull it out and ask which fairytale it is.

And I'll remember that it wasn't a fairytale at all.

And I'll remember that I never looked at the last page, and, later that night, I'll read the

story again and I'll turn to the end and…

I'll realize that is hasn't ended yet. There's still room for a few more words, the last page

left half-blank under a picture of an old man sleeping next to his husband of sixty years in the last room they'll share together, and I'll realize that this was always the ending to my story, and if I had just…

No. No use thinking like that now.

I changed it, didn't I? My ending could have been different, it could have stayed sulfur and lead, and it could've stayed dragons and towers, but it didn't. My story was bullets so I used them. My story was dragons so I became them. My story was highway robbery and shots to the head, bleeding out in hallways while holding his hand, begging, _Please, he's hurting me, please, please… _

The point is that it _changed_.

* * *

><p>[Do you know how it ends? Do you feel lucky? Do you want to go home now? There's a bottle of whiskey in the trunk of the Chevy and a<p>

dead man at our feet

staring up at us like we're something is where the evening splits in half, Henry, love or death. Grab an end, pull hard,

and make a wish.]

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **Thanks for reading!

I've gotten a few emails/messages/whathaveyou about re-posting one of my older fics, "A Quiet Mind". The thing about that (and about Birds of the Summer, if anyone's noticed it's gone, too) is that I am not a novel writer. I wasn't happy with how I'd written AQM, and though I liked BotS well enough, I get horribly bored writing longer fics after a while, and if I'm bored writing it, then who's going to enjoy reading it, you know? So please bear with me, as I'm mulling over the idea of rewriting the both of them into shorter (don't quote me on this, but maybe around 25,000 words apiece...probably less) ficlets. Please also keep in mind that I am a human person, and, as a human person, I am busy and fickle. I will make NO promises (zero, none, zilch) as to when either of those two, or any of the half-dozen, half-done fics I've got on my computer will be up.

But, seriously, thanks for the vested interest, it means so much.


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